A Guide: Who's Investigating What

THE Watergate drama shifts this week to the marble-pillared, chandelier-lit Senate Caucus Room, scene of the Teapot Dome investigation and the Army-McCarthy hearings. Such is the demand for seats that for the first time in Senate history tickets are being issued for the 200 public places.

With scores of witnesses due to testify, the hearings are expected to last until next fall--perhaps longer, depending on what the probe unearths. The committee comprises four Democrats and three Republicans chosen by the Senate leadership of both parties:

SAM J. ERVIN JR., 76, chairman, a Democrat from North Carolina, is perhaps more suited for the job than any other member of the Senate. His political ambitions behind him, he is respected for his fairness and for an understanding of constitutional issues that he gained from service on the North Carolina Supreme Court.

HOWARD H. BAKER JR., 47, ranking Republican member, is a moderate conservative from Tennessee who still has political ambitions (he has twice tried to gain the Senate G.O.P. leadership). Working closely with Ervin, he will try to get at the truth without alienating his fellow Republicans.

EDWARD J. GURNEY, 59, first Republican to be elected to the Senate from Florida since Reconstruction, is a loyal supporter of the Nixon Administration. If the Democratic members get too rough on the White House, he can be counted on to set them straight.

DANIEL K. INOUYE, 48, Democrat from Hawaii, is assistant majority whip. A combat veteran who lost his right arm in World War II, he is likely to be one of the most aggressive interrogators.

JOSEPH M. MONTOYA, 57, Democrat from New Mexico, served eight years in the House before he was elected to the Senate in 1964. Not a Senate power, he is likely to follow Ervin's lead.

HERMAN E. TALMADGE, 59, a Georgia Democrat, is a plainspoken, cigar-chomping Senate veteran who had to be prodded into serving on the committee. "I don't have the time nor the resources nor the inclination to be a private eye," he explains. Whatever Ervin does will be all right with Talmadge.

LOWELL P. WEICKER JR., 42, first-term Republican Senator from Connecticut, is the most controversial member of the committee. By conducting his own investigation of John Dean and others, he has run afoul of his fellow committee members, who have publicly reprimanded him. Primed for a vendetta against the White House guard, he may provide explosive moments before the cameras.

Most of the questioning will probably be done by the committee's chief counsel, Samuel Dash, 48, who heads a staff of 39. Dash's credentials are impeccable: he served as a district attorney in Philadelphia, teaches law at Georgetown, and wrote a book on electronic surveillance, The Eavesdroppers. Working alongside him is Chief Minority Counsel Fred D. Thompson, a scourge of moonshiners as a federal prosecutor in Tennessee.

So extensive is the Watergate scandal, so complex is it in detail that it has inspired several other investigations, all operating more or less simultaneously:

> The Federal Grand Jury in Washington. Convened as a routine grand jury twelve days before the Watergate break-in last June, it has returned indictments against seven conspirators, all now convicted, and many more indictments are expected. A rather typical Washington jury--about two-thirds of its members are black and more than half are women--it began by passively following the guidance of Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl J. Silbert, but it soon developed an eagerness to interrogate witnesses under the lead of Foreman Vladimir Pregelj, a Yugoslav-born economist at the Library of Congress.

>The Federal Grand Jury in New York. Following up a long probe by the SEC, it began an investigation in late January of the $200,000 contribution by Financier Robert Vesco to the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (C.R.P.). After last week's indictment of Vesco, John Mitchell, Maurice Stans and Harry L. Sears, it may hand up more indictments during its remaining six months. In other grand jury action, a federal panel in Orlando, Fla., has indicted G.O.P. Operative Donald Segretti for distributing a phony letter on Edmund Muskie's stationery accusing Hubert Humphrey and Henry M. Jackson of sexual misconduct.

>The General Accounting Office. Charged with reporting violations of the 1971 campaign-spending act, the congressional watchdog has taken numerous complaints to the Justice Department and given them wide publicity. Justice has levied a total of eight fines of $1,000 each against C.R.P.

> The U.S. Justice Department. Initially, Attorney General Richard Kleindienst and Henry Petersen, chief of the Criminal Division, ordered the FBI not to track down the sources of the campaign contributions that financed Watergate. But as the scandal has widened and pressures have built, both the FBI and federal prosecutors have been given a freer hand. The FBI is currently checking into several angles, including the Los Angeles break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.

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